April 13, 2010

Cecilia Woloch: Postcard to I. Kaminsky from a Dream at the Edge of the Sea

I was leaving a country of rain for a country of apples.
I hadn't much
time. I told my beloved to wear his bathrobe, his cowboy boots, a black
patch
like a pirate might wear over his sharpest eye. My own bags were full of
salt,
which made them shifty, hard to lift. Houses had fallen, face first,
into the
mud at the edge of the sea. Hurry, I thought, and my hands were like
birds. They
could hold nothing. A feathery breeze. Then a white tree blossomed over
the bed,
all white blossoms, a painted tree. "Oh," I said, or my love said to me.
We want
to be human, always, again, so we knelt like children at prayer while
our lost
mothers hushed us. A halo of bees. I was dreaming as hard as I could
dream. It
was fast—how the apples fattened and fell. The country that rose up to
meet me
was steep as a mirror; the gold hook gleamed.